In recent years, cell culture techniques have been used in various fields. For example, cells are cultured in vitro and the cultured cells are administered to patients in a treatment or are used in toxicity tests for drugs and the like. Such cell culture techniques have been used for a long time, but most of cell culture processes have involved manual operations, which impose a heavy burden on workers. Therefore, it is desirable to simplify or automate each operation. In particular, in an initial process of cell culture in which a cell is separated from a body tissue, many operations need to be performed, such as washing and disinfecting a body tissue biopsied from a patient or donor and separating a cell from the body tissue by performing a treatment with an enzyme-containing liquid. This imposes a heavy burden on workers.
For example, PTL 1 discloses a cell dispersion device including a tissue holding member that can hold a body tissue and at least partly has a plurality of cell-passing pores with a size at which a cell can be passed; a liquid storage member that can store a dispersant-containing liquid used to immerse the body tissue held in the tissue holding member, the liquid storage member being disposed so as to surround the tissue holding member; and a stream generating member that generates a stream on the dispersant-containing liquid so that the cell separated from the body tissue by the action of the dispersant-containing liquid stored in the liquid storage member passes through the cell-passing pores of the tissue holding member toward the outside of the tissue holding member. A process of separating a cell from a body tissue and dispersing the cell, which has been manually performed, can be automatically conducted by using the cell dispersion device. Therefore, a process of separating a cell from a body tissue and dispersing the cell using a dispersant can be easily conducted.
PTL 1: Japanese Patent No. 4520855